Growing dahlias with relative ease is one of the joys of having a glasshouse. Not that it is impossible to grow them without one – you can stick the tubers straight into the ground if you like – but starting them in the greenhouse gives them the best possible head start, and means that the […]

One of the greenhouse crops that I have never quite cracked is aubergines. Perhaps they just need more than I’ve got: time to get them going early enough; patience and light to nurse them through late spring indoors; and then heat in the summer. Obviously with the eternal optimism of the gardener I am fairly […]

These are tough times for those plants that are waiting in the greenhouse for warmer days. They have made it through winter, yes, and it is true that light levels are improving all the time, but many are weakened by their months in less-than-perfect circumstances, and need a little extra help to limp through to […]

It may be the depths of winter but it will not be very long at all until it is time to start sowing Brussels sprouts. This is how the year turns and surprises us: come February, just a few short weeks away, it will be time to sow. I realise I must get my early-sowing […]

I am reaching the very end of the tomato crop that I grew in the glasshouse and polytunnel this summer, the last few that I picked green when the weather started to turn cold, and then left to ripen in a paper bag in a draw. I have checked them whenever I have remembered and […]

With the encroaching cold there is propagation to be done in unheated greenhouses or cold frames: hawthorns for hedges. Until recently I had a few hawthorn trees along the boundary with my neighbour, but we have chopped them right down to the base. The idea is to encourage them to sprout from the ground to […]

What began as a cracking summer in the greenhouse fizzled out, as summers so often do, just as the kids broke up for the holidays. The days they had spent sitting in classrooms gazing out at blue skies and parched earth were swapped for sitting in their bedrooms looking out at the rain. The chillies […]

It is time for me to start thinking about sowing winter herbs for the glasshouse. Parsley has slowly crept into my life in a big way. It used to be a herb I shunned – a white parsley sauce has a sort of bland, milky, mildly green flavour that I have never got on with. […]

Always site your glasshouse in your sunniest spot, goes the gardening wisdom, and quite rightly too. There is little point going to all the trouble of buying and erecting a structure perfectly designed to capture every ray of sunlight and drop of warmth if you then plonk it in the lee of a building or […]

The tomatoes that started in the greenhouse need planting out now – a little late but life and half term had their own ideas, so a couple of weeks ago I potted them up into big pots to keep them ticking over, and now is the moment to get these big brutes into the polytunnel. […]

The greenhouse’s most bonny specimens at the moment are beans, almost bursting out of their pots and modules desperate to get out into the ground. And it won’t be long. I have a few types on the go. Most shamefully I have broad beans, which is an admission that all of those I sowed in […]

The strong urge to push on with the growing year only increases if you have a greenhouse at your disposal: surely – we think – I can get everything going nice and early and be ahead of the game? Be harvesting when everyone else is just planting out? Have ripe tomatoes in June? We might […]